Day 3-First Love

Not to sound like a broken record of other 30-day bloggers, but I think at 17 it can be difficult to define love, especially in the sense that I know and understand it now.  Was I in love when I was 17?  Probably.  Did I fully understand the concept of love at that point in my life though?  Definitely not.  I do believe people come into your life for a reason, and I'm so grateful to have dated such a wonderful person for my "first love".  He really was everything that a 17-20 year old boyfriend should be, and what every parent should hope that their daughter is one day able to date.  I have many happy, wonderful memories from the years we dated each other.

But our lives changed, and one day I suddenly realized we were going down different paths and wanting different things from our lives.  Like what happens in so many relationships from high school, I had gone away to college and he had stayed at home.  After a year of dating through college, I realized that I wanted a completely different college experience than he did.  I also knew that if that was how we felt about college, our lives would only continue to get more difficult if we tried staying together.  So I broke up with him, and literally we did not talk to each other anymore.  For awhile I missed that chunk of my life that had been there for so long, and I certainly wish we could have remained friends, but I don't know that it would have worked.  Our break-up honestly taught me more than our relationship ever did--I learned to be independent and that my self-worth didn't depend on my relationship status. 

While my husband doesn't remember this, I actually met him the summer I broke up with my first love.  I think that's much more than a coincidence.  And while he was not my first love and I was not his, our story is enough for another entirely different post...